As the costume designer for FX’s historical epic Shōgun, set in 1600 Japan, Carlos Rosario knew his designs would serve the very vital purpose of supporting the audience’s connection to, and understanding of the story.
In contrast to recent Best Picture winner Oppenheimer, another historical piece with a sprawling ensemble, where Christopher Nolan could cast stars “as a means of understanding who everyone was,” this series featured “very few actors” familiar to an Western audience, Rosario notes. In the case of Shōgun, he says, this sort of audience shorthand would instead be fostered through costumes. Therefore, “the entrance of every character was so essential because it created that silhouette, and then you just never forget them as long as they’re there.”
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As much as this idea applied to the individual character, it applied equally to groups — namely, the warring armies of feudal Japan, during the period of transition and “great political unrest” known as the Sengoku Jidai, each of which would be costumed in a different color. “That was really the starting point of everything, in a way,” Rosario reflects, “because with that, we knew that the audience would know exactly who is who.”
An adaptation of James Clavell’s bestselling novel from creators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, the hugely popular Shōgun is set at the dawn of a century-defining civil war. The show examines the intertwined fates of Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him; John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English sailor whose ship has been found marooned in a nearby fishing village; and their translator, Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a mysterious Christian noblewoman and the last of a disgraced line.
In addition to color, one of the most essential aspects of design that helped Rosario lay the foundation for his approach to this complex historical period was texture. In contrast to the subsequent Edo period, he explains in conversation with the show’s creators in today’s episode of The Process, “flamboyant and shiny” looks were less commonplace. Instead, the prevailing texture was “a bit more rustic, more in touch with nature.”
For Rosario, who was aided in his work on the series by the Kyoto-based consultant Frederik Cryns, among many others, the project represented a bit of everything that is “a dream for a costume designer,” between its “complex, interesting characters” and its blend of the intellectual, the psychological and the creative.
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Co-creator and EP Kondo credits Rosario as being one of the creatives most essential to unlocking the show as a whole, suggesting that he essentially “gave everybody a plane ticket to 1600 Japan,” so detailed was his work.
“We got to actually go there and sensorially experience it, and it leapt out at us because of your work,” says Kondo. “I don’t think we had the eyes to see when we started. It was through your work that kind of allowed us to say, ‘Ah, this is what we were aiming toward.'”
Premiering in February, Shōgun was met with such a huge response that two more seasons were put into development, even if the project was originally conceived as a miniseries. Check out the full conversation between Rosario, Kondo and Marks above.